tater_salad posted:

Budgetwise keeps improving and while not automatic 99 for lifetime is not a bad deal or $4/Month.

Xik posted:

God it's sooooo difficult to like YNAB as an org and product, even when the method has made such a huge positive impact on our lives. There's this sort of cultish air to all the communities (forums, reddit etc) and the staff and official comms all come off like they love the smell of their own farts even as they give you terrible advice.

Xik posted:

We're doing our 6 monthly, "should we move over to nynab" check. I just searched how to share a budget with partner and got this thread.

God it's sooooo difficult to like YNAB as an org and product, even when the method has made such a huge positive impact on our lives. There's this sort of cultish air to all the communities (forums, reddit etc) and the staff and official comms all come off like they love the smell of their own farts even as they give you terrible advice.

tater_salad posted:

Budgetwise keeps improving and while not automatic 99 for lifetime is not a bad deal or $4/Month.

Voodoofly posted:

This is probably a commonly repeated request, but I'm just looking for a simple budgeting app that will auto-sync with all my checking accounts, saving accounts, credit cards, etc. and allow me to plan and track my budget to keep things in check.

I used YNAB4 for a few years but hated manually entering everything (or even just manually downloading files from all our accounts to import) - it was a great tool and really helped me get better with budgets, but at this point I really just want something that is more of a "make sure we are staying on track" as opposed to need to change my life for the better.

I know I tried new YNAB on a trial at some point, but for the life of me I can't remember how well it syncs up automatically with checking accounts, saving accounts, credit cards, etc, but from what I can remember it still didn't work that well. I've tried looking online to see if it's improved but haven't found a very straight answer (as someone pointed out, their forums posts are sometimes less than helpful), so was hoping some of you might have honest feedback.

Basically I'd love any advice on some of the better options that exist right now, and any honest pros and cons. If it helps at all:

1. We have no debt right now, and use a CC for almost all of our purchases which is paid off monthly. We do have multiple savings accounts set up for just a general rainy day fund, a house saving fund (ha!), a travel/tattoos/other fun poo poo fund, etc., and I can't remember if YNAB ever got over that "if you use our software you don't need separate accounts ever so we made it super hard to deal with that" ideology.
2. Back in YNAB4 days I constantly reduced categories, going from way to drat many to maybe 8-10 broad general categories for our spending. I expect I'd do the same again.
3. I will gladly pay more for something that saves time in doing this - I don't want to spend an hour or so a week manually entering/categorizing things, although I don't mind putting in some time up front to set up auto-categorizing terms or whatever it was that YNAB was able to see "PG&E" and auto-categorize it to utilities or whatever.
4. I don't really care about phone access - in an ideal world this is something I can spend an hour or two on each month at a computer when I go over our monthly finances to help keep track of things.
5. Again, this isn't to learn how to budget and manage money (YNAB4 was amazing for that), just something to help evaluate how we are doing and looking at areas we can improve from time to time.

Thanks in advance

Edit: Is Quicken something that I should look into? I'm an Excel idiot and always assumed Quicken was more for robust/corporate accounting, but I see it mentioned from time to time for household budgets. I guess I've always just been afraid of it.

El Mero Mero posted:

let's you spend more time not thinking about budgeting

El Mero Mero posted:

For all of the bitching about nYNAB this is what the new version does best. It syncs transactions from nearly any financial company and remembers categories you've applied to similar transactions in the past.

It's a huge time saver and let's you spend more time thinking about budgeting

Sirotan posted:

You can pry YNAB4 from my cold, dead hands.

Sirotan posted:

You can pry YNAB4 from my cold, dead hands.

Sirotan posted:

You can pry YNAB4 from my cold, dead hands.

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

The yearly fee is well worth never having to worry about when Dropbox will change their sync API and break everything in 4. Also never having the "your desktop has triggered a re-sync and you will lose all your poo poo you entered for the past 3 weeks."

Slimy Hog posted:

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

The yearly fee is well worth never having to worry about when Dropbox will change their sync API and break everything in 4. Also never having the "your desktop has triggered a re-sync and you will lose all your poo poo you entered for the past 3 weeks."

Future Wax posted:

When you say this about the Dropbox API, are you talking about it breaking the sync between multiple devices via Dropbox, or making YNAB4 not work at all? It seems like if you only ever used it on one computer and didn't need to sync with anything else it shouldn't need Dropbox.

bort posted:

I'm trying the leap to nYNAB again in January. Still on the fence about whether I'll auto-import or continue micromanaging. I've always liked the daily interaction, but I've noticed recently that it's effort I really don't need. Other decisions: follow nearly everyone's advice and use credit cards differently than they intend, and whether or not to try to import a "Fresh Start" budget from YNAB4 or completely start anew.

I keep paying for the cloud version but using YNAB4. After October's announcement, I want to be someplace where I don't have to worry about it breaking suddenly.

Sirotan posted:

You can pry YNAB4 from my cold, dead hands.

FateFree posted:

This same concern comes up over and over, just auto import and manually approve and reconcile when it does, there's no possible benefit doing this any other way.

As for credit cards that depends on your bank, if you carry a balance, and if you get cash back. I treat mine like they intended and it works perfectly, the only catch is that after cash back rewards, I have to move the money out of the credit card category.

bort posted:

So far, so good. I'm completing the year in YNAB4 so I have holistic reporting, but I jumped the gun and did December in nYNAB, and it's pretty great. The mobile app is so much better. Side-by-side months and moving budget item balances to the next month were nice things, but not essential.

Admiral Joeslop posted:

I get paid commission so my weekly paycheck is different every time. Right now I'm just putting in an amount that's slightly lower than average to take extra slow weeks into account. Is there a better way to this? Also, is there no way to edit budgets on the classic mobile app?

Admiral Joeslop posted:

I get paid commission so my weekly paycheck is different every time. Right now I'm just putting in an amount that's slightly lower than average to take extra slow weeks into account. Is there a better way to this? Also, is there no way to edit budgets on the classic mobile app?

Jesus In A Can posted:

For the person saying they couldn't find YNAB Classic in the store anymore: I couldn't either, and I had uninstalled it a while back on this phone. Through the Play Store, if you go to your library, it still appears and if you click on it, you can still install it.

Beach Bum posted:

Pure commission? I have a small monthly commission I get on top of my salary; I just have a scheduled transaction for the salary and add mileage/commission on top of that when I get paid. I run a small "Reserve Funds" category ($1000) for shortages and other oddball purchases I can draw from on a month-to-month basis.